Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Investigating Past Eruptions of Mono Craters

CalVO geologist Mae Marcaida examines thin layers of volcanic ash sandwiched between thick beds of sediment deposited by ancestral Mono Lake in eastern California.

CalVO geologist Mae Marcaida examines thin layers of volcanic ash s...
CalVO geologist Mae Marcaida examines thin layers of volcanic ash sandwiched between thick beds of sediment deposited by ancestral Mono Lake in eastern California. Each ash layer is evidence of a past explosive eruption of the Mono Craters, which began erupting about 65,000 years ago just south of present-day Mono Lake. Marcaida and her colleagues use the chemistry of magnetic minerals (titanomagnetites) found in the ash to uniquely "fingerprint" each layer and link it to one of the more than 30 eruptive centers that form the Mono Craters chain. For more information about the Mono Craters ash study see: Geochemical fingerprinting of Wilson Creek tephra layers (Mono Basin, California) using titanomagnetite compositions

Each ash layer is evidence of a past explosive eruption of the Mono Craters, which began erupting about 65,000 years ago just south of present-day Mono Lake. Marcaida and her colleagues use the chemistry of magnetic minerals (titanomagnetites) found in the ash to uniquely "fingerprint" each layer and link it to one of the more than 30 eruptive centers that form the Mono Craters chain. For more information about the Mono Craters ash study see: Geochemical fingerprinting of Wilson Creek tephra layers (Mono Basin, California) using titanomagnetite compositions 

Get Our News

These items are in the RSS feed format (Really Simple Syndication) based on categories such as topics, locations, and more. You can install and RSS reader browser extension, software, or use a third-party service to receive immediate news updates depending on the feed that you have added. If you click the feed links below, they may look strange because they are simply XML code. An RSS reader can easily read this code and push out a notification to you when something new is posted to our site.